On April 16th, Anke Boersma proudly announced the immediate availability for download of the Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.04 operating system. Dubbed Archimedes, Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.04 is the second maintenance release for 2012 and it is powered by Linux kernel 3.2.8 and KDE Software Compilation 4.8.2, as well as the latest Calligra 2.4 office suite, Qt 4.8.1, updated sound stack, phonon and krb5 packages.

Highlights of Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.04:

· Linux kernel 3.2.8;

· Linux kernel 3.0.22 (optional);

· KDE Software Compilation 4.8.2;

· Qt 4.8.1;

· QtWebkit 2.2.1;

· Switch to kmod;

· tomoyo-tools 2.5;

· initscripts were updated to allow testing of systemd;

· wqy-microhei is now the default font for Japanese, Chinese and Korean lanaguages.

On April 28th, Anne Nicolas announced the immediate availability for download of the third and last Beta release of the upcoming Mageia 2 operating system. Mageia 2 Beta 3 is powered by Linux kernel 3.3.1, improving support for Xen virtualization, addition of a new iSCSI stack or NFC, and the Tomoyo framework.

Download Mageia 2 Beta 3 now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a beta release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only.

Other News:

· On April 18th, the first point release of the GNOME 3.4 desktop environment was announced by the GNOME Project developers. As usual with a maintenance release, the GNOME 3.4.1 update brings important fixes and various improvments among various packages such as Baobab, Brasero, Empathy, Eye of GNOME, GCalctool, GDM, GTK+, MouseTweaks, Nautilus, Vino, Yelp, GNOME Terminal, GNOME System Monitor, GNOME Shell, GNOME Settings Daemon, GNOME Session, GNOME Screenshot, GNOME Panel, GNOME Keyring, GNOME Online Accounts, GNOME Desktop, GNOME Control Center, and some other core libraries. Read more about it here.

· On April 20th, Canonical published on the Ubuntu Wiki the release schedule for the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 operating system. The final version of Ubuntu 12.10 will see the light of day on October 18th, 2012. For Ubuntu 12.10, the Ubuntu developers decided to modify the release schedule, again, to three Alpha versions and two Beta releases. Read more about it here.

· Stellarium is a one of a kind software that provides more than just a simple rendering of the night sky, as it can also illustrate our space dreams, and because we cannot yet go to the stars, we can make the stars come to us.

Stellarium 0.11.2

It’s always difficult to write a conclusion for a software you love, but if it were after me, Stellarium should be an obligatory course, at least through middle school. This is the kind of application that makes you feel important and insignificant at the same time, but it also teaches you that the Universe is a big place and that we know mostly nothing about it.